Jennifer McKaig

E-commerce platform

250-1000 Employees, Service

Personal Insights

What matters most to us:

Maintaining the human connection in commerce. People (including our families, teams, cooperatives, and communities) are definitely at the center of all decisions at Etsy.

What we learned:

The biggest surprise to me was realizing that our employees deeply cared about the things the B Impact Assessment measured. They wanted to work together to raise our score. We finally had a quantifiable way to look at responsible decision making. For a group of nerds who love data and measurement tools, this was the perfect framework. There were a lot of company-wide things we were doing, like composting our lunch waste and supporting local small businesses, but we had never actually measured any of those efforts. Now that we have measurements and goals around our efforts, it felt really gratifying for everyone.

What we did as a result:

When we took the Assessment for the first time, our score barely passed the minimum certification requirement. We decided to get the entire company involved with finding ways to improve our business by organizing a B Corp inspired "Hack Day"; everyone took a break from their daily routine on that day and collaborated on unexpected, fun projects that could improve the health and happiness of our business. We used our Impact Report as inspiration, but people were certainly not limited to that. The day ended with 2 hours of presentations and a bounty of great ideas. A huge number of them have since been implemented and integrated into business operations. A few examples of ideas from Hack Day that are now a part of Etsy's fabric are: An updated volunteer leave policy and program, carbon footprint tracking, Etsy School (admin-taught internal school), IdeaCraft (an internal speaker series), living plant walls, and female-driven learning & development workshops.